Dear Colleagues
I thought some of you might be interested in the following talk:
Date: 27th July, 2001
Time: 1.00 to 2.00 PM
Place: Large seminar room, Institute of Public Health (NOT the Strangeway
Research Laboratory Site),
Unversity of Cambridge
TITLE of TALK
"ESTIMATION of QUALITY-ADJUSTED SURVIVAL and SURVIVAL-WEIGHTED HEALTH
PROFILE for OUTCOME EVALUATION in HEALTH and MEDICINE"
Prof Jung-Der Wang, M.D., Sc. D.
Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene
National Taiwan University College of Public Health
ABSTRACT
To quantify the utility of health for outcome research, my colleague and I
proposed an estimator to calculate the expected quality-adjusted survival
(QAS) by multiplying the quality of life (QOL) into the survival function.
The area under the QAS curve is thus the expected utility of health of the
specific health condition. While the survival function can be determined by
the usual life table method, the QOL data can be collected by a cross-
sectional survey among patients who are currently surviving. In many follow-
up studies with heavy censoring, the expected QAS can be extrapolated
throughout life with certain degree of accuracy by borrowing information
from the general population and using Monte Carlo simulation to create a
reference population. Similarly, if each dimension of the health profile is
assessed through psychometric measurement on an interval scale, then it can
also be weighted by survival and summing up to a life long score.
WHOQOL (World Health Organization Quality of Life) data collected from a
cohort of 779 breast cancer patients from Chiangmai, Thailand and followed
for 12 years were used to demonstrate such a usage.
(More information on IPH could be found at http://www.iph.cam.ac.uk/, and
there is information on how to get to IPH at http://www.mrc-
bsu.cam.ac.uk/General/locate.shtml. Please note that the MRC Biostatistic
Unit is part of IPH. Also please take note that parking will be an issue at
IPH site).
Dr Paul Ng
Institute of Public Health
University of Cambridge
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